Review: The First Exchange Sampler & Companion by Dale Cozort

Guest post by Kieran Colfer.

Imagine waking up one morning, and as you yawn and stretch you realize something; it's too quiet outside. You go to the window, open the curtains and at first everything seems ok. Then you look towards the end of the garden, and where you should see a busy suburban street, all there is is grasslands as far as the eye can see. In the middle distance, what you thought was a large boulder slowly sits up and starts ambling along, munching on the grass. With a shock, you realize that it's a Wooly Mammoth...

Welcome to the world of Exchange by Dale Cozort, a world where our reality co-exists with one in which our ancestors never amounted to anything, and the big mammals never died out at the end of the last Ice Age and evolved without mankind to bother them. Every so often, these two realities collide, and a chunk of our world of up to a few hundred square miles in size gets swapped with its counterpart in what has become known as "bear country". These Exchanges happen with about 3 days warning, can last up to a couple of weeks, and for those few weeks, life in the exchanged area suddenly becomes a hell of a lot more interesting - if you thought the "rat race" was bad, imagine waking up to find a Sabretooth Tiger with 10,000 years of evolution under its belt peering in your window!

The story in this novel is based around what happens with one of these exchanges, where a woman trapped in an Exchange who has to rescue her kidnapped daughter before the Exchange ends, trapping them in Bear Country forever. What I am reviewing here however isn't the novel itself, but a "sampler companion" to the novel.

This is not so much a book in itself as a literary version of the "extras menu" on a DVD; here, you get some extra short essays and novelettes that expand on the story/universe created in the novel itself. Some are "directors cuts" or samplers/first drafts/deleted scenes of what finally ended up in the novel, some are essays expanding on the background of Exchanges, like the logistics of what happens when an exchange is detected as about to occur, and the ecological implications of having a large chunk of an alien ecosystem dropped in on our world for a few weeks. The last chapter then is a "sneak preview" of the sequel to the novel, just to whet the appetite...

The sampler is meant to be used like the DVD extras menu, where you dip in and out of whatever section/chapter you want, but if like me you prefer to start at the start and work your way up, the book is arranged as follows: sample excerpts from the book, then short stories based around the events of the book, then some essays about why the author wrote what he did, then some "world-building" essays fleshing out some of the logistics and science around how the exchanges would actually work, then some "making of" samples of the first drafts of what eventually turned out to be the book, and then finally a sneak preview of the upcoming sequel.  To me, starting with the excerpts and the short stories is putting things slightly out of order, as if like me you haven't read the original book, starting with these is landing you into the action with no frame of reference as to what is actually going on or what people are talking about.

That minor quibble aside, this sampler is a good teaser opener into what promises to be an interesting take on the "people out of time and place" sci-fi trope (as soon as my credit card clears I'll probably be paying a visit to Amazon based on this). If you've already read Exchange, then this sampler is still worth a read as it may fill in some gaps and questions you had while you were reading it. So, if the idea of the Exchange tickles your curiosity buds, then this is a good place to start scratching them....

* * *

Kieran Colfer is a member of the AH Weekly Update Review Team.

Review: 43* by Jeff Greenfield

Guest post by Kieran Colfer.

It was a familiar refrain from the political left all the way though the Bush years and ever since: "Everything would be different if only Gore had won the election". There would be no budget deficit, no Iraq War, everyone would still love the USA and we'd be well on our way to solving global warming. There have been many fantasies about this, including even a Saturday Night Live skit by Al Gore himself, but here it finally gets the full book treatment.

Normally the "President Gore" fantasies begin with the election night count itself, but here the author does something a bit cleverer, he moves the butterfly back a year to a little boy being washed up on a Florida beach. As a result, the Florida election turnout is slightly different enough to not need a recount, and so Al Gore returns to the White House as The Man rather then The-Man-In-Waiting. This isn't the only butterfly in the book, however, the second one blows the whole "9/11 was as bad as things can get" idea right out of the water. This particular twist sends subsequent events off on a direction totally different from our timeline - or does it?

The book itself takes a little bit of time to get used to - most alternative history books you read are about events and characters long since consigned to the pages of history, but here you are reading about events that you have lived though (or "would live through" maybe?), so it was slightly strange seeing characters and saying "ah yeah, I remember him".  One nice touch here is in the battle between the recently defeated Republican power players and the newly elected Gore -  a lot of the quotes here will look very familiar, as they are quotes used by the Republicans after Obama won in the 2008 election. For those who look back on the Post-Bush days through rose-tinted glasses and imagine a Gore presidency as a halcyon time of bi-partisan co-operation, this book may come as a rude awakening, but politics was never a gentleman's game, and we see this here in spades.

My one big issue with this book is the ending - in the context of the book itself, it's a good place to end, but it's a bit abrupt, you're left hanging wondering what will happen next. Will a second order counterfactual kick in for Iraq, or wont it? This is a book that begs for a sequel, although it is a clever move by the author to leave the public wanting more.

* * *

Kieran Colfer is a member of the AH Weekly Update Review Team.

Review: Wake Up and Dream by Ian R. MacLeod

Guest post by Kieran Colfer.

Hollywoodland, 1940. The age of the "Talkies" is over. Just like talking pictures replaced the silent movies, the talkies have been replace by the "Feelies", a new breakthrough in cinema technology. Meanwhile, war clouds are gathering in Europe, while at home an unpopular President Rooselvelt is facing a new challenge by the new far-right Liberty Party. Down-on-his-luck actor-turned-private-investigator Clark Gable has just been given a a rather strange case by a woman whose husband, a famous but reclusive screenwriter, has disappeared. Instead of finding him however, his job is to impersonate him and sign a contract for his latest film. Piece of cake, right? You know what they say though about jobs that look too good to be true....

The AH aspect of Wake Up and Dream by Ian R. MacLeod (winner of the for 2011 Best
Long-Form Alternate History Sidewise Award)  is quite subtly worked into the narrative. After an initial "setting the scene", the first half is the sort of pure detective story that any fan of Elmore Leonard, Raymond Chandler or James Ellroy would be familiar with. For me, not being a fan of this genre, this is the one part of the novel that dragged a bit, but things pick up again once the "conspiracy" starts to be revealed - why was Daniel still doing research when the screenplay was already written, and what is "thrasis"?

Gradually a world slightly different from ours starts to be revealed, how the movie empires we are familiar with have crumbled, and how life is great for a white man in California, but no so great if you're black, Jewish or Hispanic. Along the way we get to meet some other familiar former Hollywood icons as minor characters, like "Howie" Hughes, the maintenance man in the local lunatic asylum. We also get to see an interesting side to the actor's (or former-actor's) personality: how easy it is to go from the verge of stardom to complete obscurity, and how the lines between the actor and the character they are playing can sometimes become blurred. And as things build up to a climax, there are some nice plot twists that will keep you in the dark until right up to the end. Is there an element of the supernatural behind all this? Is up to you to figure out.

All in all, this was an enjoyable read, although there was one element in it I would have liked to see a bit more of. In the novel, we see an America cheerfully sleep-walking itself into fascism, but there's no mention of where the Liberty Party came from, or how it got to be as big as it is. Its use in the narrative as just something everyone knows about already is well worked in, but it does leave you (well, me anyway) wanting to know more about it. Maybe there's another novel there?

* * *

Kieran Colfer is a member of the AH Weekly Update Review Team.

Review: Wolf Hunt by Sebastian Breit

Guest post by A.J. Nolte.

When you think of alternate history, two time periods jump immediately to mind: the American Civil War and World War 2. By far, these two conflicts are the most frequently re-imagined periods in alternate history, with many novels, anthologies and scholarly essays dedicated to them. Among these alternate histories, many posit the idea of modern, or even slightly near-future military elements going back in time to change the course of the war. Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South and John Birmingham's Axis of Time trilogy are only two of the more well-known examples. With Wolf Hunt, Sebastian Breit appears to be embarking on a project similar in scope to Birmingham's well-known trilogy. So when I read Breit's novel, I was looking for it, ultimately, to do one thing: distinguish itself from every other World War 2 alternate history ever written.

At this, I would have to say Wolf Hunt was modestly successful. The premise is a bit too reminiscent of the Axis of Time trilogy for total uniqueness; an allied, U.S.-led force is on its way to perform a humanitarian intervention, when it is pulled back in time to World War 2. After an extremely devastating bout of blue on blue violence which feels just a bit contrived, the up-timers set about trying to change the course of the war, to the detriment of the Nazis. Beyond these similarities, however, many of the differences actually favor Breit's novel over Birmingham's. For one thing, and this is the true hook of Wolf Hunt, over half the modern task force is German. This also makes the eventual blue on blue violence somewhat more explicable than Birmingham's "oops, we just ran into the down-timer U.S. navy" plot device in Axis of Time.

Legitimate difference over national interest rapidly heightens the tension between U.S. navy Captain Stephen Flynn and his German counterpart and friend, Captain Florian Hallwinter. One might be forgiven for thinking that two men who obviously knew and trusted one another as thoroughly as Flynn and Hallwinter would have found some more effective way of dealing with these divergent interests, and confronting their mutual enemies. On the other hand, what actually happens isn't totally unreasonable, given a totally unprecedented and panic-stricken situation, and it's clearly necessary to keep the story suspenseful. This was something which bothered me a great deal while I was reading the book, but less so in retrospect. Still, I would have liked to see more attention paid to this conflict; while it's a necessary element of the plot, the way it's presented comes off feeling just a little bit forced.

Throughout the rest of the book, the parallel story-lines follow Flynn and Hallwinter, as well as their crews. The American sections, while well-written, feel a bit boiler-plate. The Americans have the now almost stereotypical encounters with J. Edgar Hoover, the racism and sexism of the 1940s and so-on.  Will any of the Americans use their future knowledge to try and change the future of American politics, subtly alter American society, or even simply help their grandparents? Hopefully, more of these human interactions will become apparent in future books.  The sections dealing with the modern Germans are Wolf Hunt's strongest element, most distinguishing feature, and clearly the plot which most interests the author. (It's an open question in my mind as to whether the book might not have been stronger without the American plot-line altogether; I will give Breit the benefit of the doubt for now on this score as he seems to be setting up for a longer series in which the Americans will be pivotal).

Captain Hallwinter, clearly a tormented soul whose decisions sometimes seem questionable, his conflicted XO, a young and highly competent Turkish officer, the ruthless Colonel Kaufmann, and even a pair of grousing helicopter pilots seem, on the whole, better flushed out than their American counterparts. And their mission, the overthrow of Hitler and the Nazi Party at the height of their power and success, is interesting, uncertain, and leaves the reader guessing until the end. I hope Breit's second novel, Clash of Eagles, has put a bit more thought into the development of the American plot-line in some non-standard directions. Additionally, there's very little attention paid to non-German and non-American perspectives in this novel. What will all these changes mean for the British, the Soviets and the Japanese? These answers are hinted at, but I'm hoping to see some viewpoint perspectives from these nations in future books.

All that said, I found Wolf Hunt a satisfying read. If you're looking for a book that does something totally new in the field, you'll be disappointed, but this is a fast-paced and interesting story told very well. In fact, most of my problems with the book are probably the type of frustration any reader will have with the first novel in a series, where some things are left for development in the future. Breit clearly knows his subject in great detail, but avoids the sadly all-too-common tendency to overload the reader with technical jargon in favor of a lean and clean story. There are some relatively minor grammatical issues and the writing's a bit clunky in parts, but for a first novel reasonably priced at four dollars (for the e-book version), it's well worth your money. And if, like most fans of alternate history, you just can't get enough of World War 2, Wolf Hunt is almost certainly a book you need to add to your collection.

Grade: 4 out of 5 stars.

* * *

A.J. Nolte is a PHD candidate in international relations at Catholic University and an aspiring sci-fi and alternate history writer . He is knowledgeable in Byzantine, medieval, ACW, Cold War, Islamic and post-colonial history. Also, he'll read almost anything once if it's got an airship in it.